Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [41]
That summer we were removed from my father’s home for the second and final time. Warren and the prophet never even spoke to Dad, giving him the chance to explain or try to find a less severe resolution. While we did return home one last night to sleep, the following morning we piled into the Suburban and Mom took us to the home of a church elder, who was directed to arrange our transportation out of town. This time, Dad would lose not only Mom but also, soon, Mother Laura. For my dad, this was the most painful blow imaginable. He was told that he had not only lost his priesthood and family but also his place in the Celestial Kingdom. To an FLDS member, this was losing everything. As with our first departure, his heart was broken, but now it was clear it would never mend.
CHAPTER SEVEN
REASSIGNMENT
For time and all eternity.
—FLDS WEDDING VOW
I have no recollection of how we got to Hildale or who drove us there. Instead, what I remember is the painful silence of the long car ride and Brad’s overwhelming guilt. Even though the altercation with my father hadn’t been his fault, he was horribly distraught over it and blamed himself for what was happening to our family. If he hadn’t become so entangled with Dad the previous day, our lives might have remained as they were. While things were far from perfect, they were what we knew. Now, once again, we were uprooted and facing an uncertain future.
The next morning, Mom assembled her kids and prepared to bring us to the home of the church elder in the Salt Lake Valley. We didn’t know anything except that we were leaving. As Mom was trying to herd us into the Suburban, Justin and Jacob refused, informing her they wouldn’t go until they knew where we were being taken. They had urged Mom not to leave, assuring her things would change, but I knew in her heart she was committed to carrying out the will of the prophet. It seemed like all that mattered was what Warren had told her, and blinded by what she thought was the will of the prophet, I suppose she did the only thing she knew and chose to leave her sons in the name of her religion. In a flurry of emotion, we left the twins at the house, with my mother telling us that someone in the church would make sure they joined us later. That never happened.
Without the twins, only five of us, Brad, Caleb, Sherrie, Ally, and me, drove out of town with Mom that day. I was too young to draw any conclusions on my own, and I felt helpless as I watched the busy city streets of Salt Lake give way to the parched, red earth of southern Utah. Even for Brad our departure was bitter. Over the last months, Dad had been trying to work on his relationship with the boys. He’d bought four-wheelers and had been taking them into the mountains to ride on weekends. Growing up, Dad had forbidden such things, even bicycles, because they would take us off the property, but riding in the mountains with the boys had started to bring them closer together.
What none of us realized that day was that we had been taken from Dad not because of his abuse. In the FLDS, physical abuse is not nearly the taboo that it is in the outside world, and kids often suffer harsh punishments at the hands of their parents. What had happened to Brad was tragic but would not ordinarily be grounds for an FLDS man to lose the priesthood. Perhaps the reason that Warren and his father felt such a drastic step was necessary was that my father had lost control over his house, and it seemed clear that he would never get it back. With each group of younger kids falling under the influence of the older ones, my father’s family was growing up doubting and sometimes defiant toward him and to the church. If the priesthood allowed this trend to continue, it might spread to other kids and other families. That was too great a risk for a religion that relied on absolute control over its members. The only solution to this was to remove the rest of the family from that environment in the hope that a new home and a new priesthood father